I am Saleh Waziruddin, president of the Park Towers Tenants Association. A few of the other tenants from our association are also here tonight.
Our building is one of the larger buildings in our ward and is owned by a REIT, a corporation that owns five buildings in this City. To squeeze more profits they’ve taken away our visitor parking, which makes it difficult for tenants who get visits from carers like nurses and PSWs.
It would be great if the City could give free parking passes to carers while they are working. That way they don’t need to worry about getting a ticket if their visit runs over.
For future buildings, the parking space requirements should include a minimum number of free visitor parking spaces to make it easier for tenants to get the care they need.
Some years ago the city had added hallway heat as a vital service landlords have to fix within 24 hours, but a few years ago when tenants in another building owned by the same REIT that owns ours tried to actually use this by-law, City Council voted to remove this protection. I am glad that three of you voted against doing that. What’s the point of by-laws to protect tenants if City Council is going to side with corporate landlords when we try to actually use these protections?
On Monday night one of the alternatives staff proposed to City Council for having staff time to enforce against vacant buildings downtown was to stop enforcing the vital services by-law entirely. This means heat inside the apartment, not just in the hallway. Many of the members of our association don’t have heat and use space heaters, they don’t want to complain. It’ll be even worse if the by-laws that are supposed to protect them aren’t even going to be enforced.
I’m glad the issue was deferred on Monday’s Council meeting but it will be coming back.
The next parts I am speaking to are from me personally and not on behalf of the Park Towers Tenants Association.
The other part of that option was not enforcing sign and graffiti by-laws. There are white supremacist groups active in Niagara who are postering and graffiti-ing in our wards and the City has an obligation to tear these down as by-law violations, let alone intimidation of residents. Please don’t remove enforcement of these by-laws.
Recently some of you said in the news that you don’t want to add costs to developers by having the City clean up the GM lands. But the costs will have to be paid one way or the other. It’s urgent to get those lands cleaned up, it’s better to clean them up now and then figure out how to get costs recovered from those who are responsible later. It’s better to delay development even 20 years if it means we can save our health and our lives right now.
The concerns about safety downtown are not new. Even the previous mayor and police chief they pointed out downtown is actually safe, even if the perception is it isn’t. More police and security guards may make some people feel safer but make many of the rest of us feel unsafe. Niagara Region Police has the second worse disproportional use of force against Black people in the province, worse than Toronto and Peel. Some of the high profile crimes downtown have happened right around the corner from officers, so more police won’t prevent crime.
Likewise you have a lot of pressure on you to remove unhoused people from our sight. But what we should be doing is providing supports even in encampments, because we don’t have the housing, like they are doing in Halifax and Kelowna. The anti-encampment by-law, misnamed the public space use by-law, because it’s about encampments, is not only a human rights violation allowed by the courts but is also a moral violation. It’s bad policy because it ends up making the problem worse through creating a revolving door for the unhoused. Anti-encampment enforcement might sell well, but is short-sighted and doesn’t work in the end, and you should know many of us oppose it.
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